Rorate Caeli: It is More Likely Than Not That Francis is a Formal Heretic

Tweet

 

All sorts of rumors are now swirling about current events in the Church:

• Cardinal Burke has been cancelling engagements. Why?
• Cardinal Muller has resigned from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Was he forced or was it voluntary?
• A formal correction of the Pope has already been made in private and is about to become public.
• The Pope and his allies are intending to radically revamp the Novus Ordo Mass to make it even more amenable to Protestants and others.

And these come against the background of significant public events and incidents:

• The official and public endorsement of a heretical understanding of communion by various groups of bishops in Argentina, Malta and now Germany, based (they claim) on the Pope's recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The Pope has either confirmed their endorsements or maintained a favorable-seeming silence.
• The "annexation" of the Sovereign Order of Malta by the Vatican.
• The overnight appearance in Rome of posters critical of a sitting pope - something not seen since the era of the Papal States.
• A parody "attack" on the pope sent via email to Vatican officials.
• A seemingly coordinated attack on Cardinal Burke - now the Pope's most identifiable "opponent" - accusing him of being a right-wing extremist in league with the Trump administration and neo-Fascist Italian politicians. The attack has involved Pope Francis himself and various Vatican allies but has also bled over into the American secular press.

A friend reminded me of this motto:

Motus in fine velocior

Motion accelerates when the end is near

But what is the "end" in this case?

The unprecedented (in modern times) suppression of four (or more) cardinals and thus a tightening of the grip of the Church of Mercy?

Open schism?

Or is it that the "end" will include the removal of a pope?

As unthinkable as the last possibility may seem, more and more people, many inside the Church hierarchy and bureaucracy, are now privately talking about it. Even if it is mere wishful thinking, this has enormous significance.

Today, Rorate Caeli, one of the leading traditionalist Catholic websites, published a long essay by Canadian-born philosopher John R.T. Lamont, addressing certain questions surrounding the meaning of "formal correction." While the positions taken in he article were not explicitly endorsed by the site, the post was not preceded by any disclaimers either, unlike other "controversial" articles they have published.

Among other things, Lamont claims:

In the light of the fact that Pope Francis has openly endorsed heretical understandings of Amoris laetitia in his letter to the bishops of the Buenos Aires region of Sept. 5th 2016, it is more likely than not that he is in fact a formal heretic.

Why then have so few cardinals and bishops publicly lined up with the four "dubia cardinals" on this? Lamont argues that much of the reason stems from an absolutist understanding of "obedience," with roots in the philosophy of St. Ignatius Loyola and other 16th and 17th century Jesuits. But this understanding is erroneous and dangerous:

The question of how anyone, even a cardinal, can correct the Pope is an important one. It is a basic principle of the divinely established constitution of the Church that the Pope judges all other Catholics on earth and is judged by none of them. But this constitution does not establish the Pope as an autocrat with tyrannical authority, who is answerable to no-one. The Pope's authority is a legal one, and as with all legal authority it involves duties to his subjects as well as rights over them. The duty to confess the Catholic faith is a fundamental duty of the papal office. His subjects may thus formally request and even require him to carry out this duty. The right to make such a formal request belongs to any Catholic, but the cardinals, whose office is to advise the Pope, have a strict duty as well as a right to make this request. The cardinals who have failed to do this are guilty of a grave dereliction of duty. This failure is a catastrophe that threatens to lead to the disintegration of most of the Church.

Read the full article here.

It should be noted that the anonymous Rorate author who introduces the piece, strongly rejects the truth of the rumor that the Pope has already been formally corrected. However, he does not explain why he believes this.

We'll find out soon enough.

Knights of Malta to Pope: Buzz Off

Tweet

In a perhaps surprising move, the quasi-independent Order of Malta quickly and strongly rejected the decision of Pope Francis to launch an investigation into the recent removal of its grand chancellor.

The Holy See had named a commission of inquiry two days ago. Some interpreted it as an effort to harass or strike back at the leader of the "dubia resistance," Cardinal Raymond Burke, who as Patron of the Knights had participated in the decision to oust the grand chancellor in early December.   

Albrecht von Boeselager was fired for allegedly being involved in the distribution of condoms while he was grand hospitaller or health minister and then attempting to cover it up.

Statement of the Grand Magistry (12/23/25)

The Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Order of Malta has learnt of the decision made by the Holy See to appoint a group of five persons to shed light on the replacement of the former Grand Chancellor. 

The replacement of the former Grand Chancellor is an act of internal governmental administration of the Sovereign Order of Malta and consequently falls solely within its competence. The aforementioned appointment is the result of a misunderstanding by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. 

The Grand Master respectfully clarified the situation yesterday evening in a letter to the Supreme Pontiff, laying out the reasons why the suggestions made by the Secretariat of State were unacceptable. 

He assured the Holy Father of his filial devotion and asked the Pontiff for the Apostolic Blessing, both for him and for the Sovereign Order of Malta, its 13,500 members and its 100,000 staff and volunteers who continue to provide a permanent and efficient hospitaller presence in more than 120 countries in the world according to the centuries-old charism of the Order of Malta.

Spadaro REPOSTS Deleted LOTR Clip with Additional Snarky Comments

Tweet

Like Anthony Weiner, he just can't stop.

Yesterday, I reported that the Pope's "mouthpiece," Jesuit editor Antonio Spadaro, had posted and then deleted a tweet seemingly equating Cardinal Burke with one of the minor villains in The Lord of the Rings. Unbeknownst to me, Deacon Nick Donnelly had noted this on his own Twitter feed the previous day. The silly kerfuffle was then prominently mentioned by at least three other Catholic blogs and sites - Vox Cantoris, OnePeterFive and Canon212.

It looks like Spadaro is monitoring our rigid neo-Pelagian activities. Today Donnelly noticed that Spadaro had put the deleted clip (and two others) back up, with a further snark at Burke (or one of us, or some generic enemy of Francis or whomever): 

He's a Herald of Woe

He also added a jokey little comment:

Nice to see what happend when I posted just some pics (& no comments) from the movie #TheLordofthe Rings Crazy things & wired hermeneutic!

As you can see, he ended it with a rosey-cheeked smiley face.

By the way, #TheLordofthe is a Twitter hashtag for people who forget to write "Rings" or mistakenly put a space before it. The hashtag page contains six tweets in the last twelve months.

Also, I assume Spadaro meant to write "weird hermeneutic" not "wired hermeneutic." Then again, you never know with Jesuits.

A friend tweeted:

I kidded him that he had just won the Understatement of the Year Award.

In one sense this is all very humorous. And, yes, I think humor is important, not in spite of, but even because of the dark days we are living through. Without humor, many of us would go crazy.

But in another sense, the spectacle is grotesque. By obstinately refusing to answer questions that the cardinals have every right to ask (and every Catholic has a right to hear the answers to), the Pope is further fanning the flames of confusion and division in the Church. It's possible an attempt might be made to "correct" a sitting pope. It's also possible the divisions in the Church itself might explode into open schism.

And in the midst of it - indeed, as his chosen response to it - one of the Pope's closest advisors is playing the Twitter troll, complete with pop culture references and putdowns.

Yesterday I referenced the "banality of evil." But banality can sometimes be colorful or even fascinating in its way. I have no doubt that future chroniclers will describe the personalities of the Court of Francis in their full glory - the kissing priest, the tweeting Jesuit, the little man with a funny name who shouted at teenage girls who dared to kneel for communion.

Hey, man, I didn't start the whole Lord of the Rings thing. But I'm going to try to end it.

There are a number of competing Wormtongues. But we all know who Saruman is.

Are the cardinals the ents?

Pope's "Mouthpiece" Spadaro Calls Cardinal Burke a "Witless Worm," Then Deletes Tweet

Tweet

The recent events involving Francis and his pontificate have been momentous. We may be witnessing the initial stages of an attempt to formerly "correct" a sitting pope for heresy.

Four cardinals sent the Pope a formal document or "Dubia" asking for clarification in the form of five simple Yes or No answers on the interpretation of the recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The Pope refused to respond.

Everyone knows why he refused. Pope Francis wants Amoris Laetitia to have a revolutionary effect on the Church. He wants it to be interpreted and taught by the bishops as allowing, among other things, communion for unrepentant adulterers. This, is of course heresy - a contradiction of the words of Christ as well as the tradition of the Church -  and the Pope knows it. So, he can't explicitly confirm that the document says this. On the other hand, he can't explicitly deny that it says this, as this would largely quash the efforts of friendly bishops to put forward his desired heretical interpretation.

So he refused to respond. And after a decent interval, the cardinals went public. Now the Pope and his men are predictably engaged in an intensive campaign to vilify the cardinals and anyone who might be allied with them.

This is obviously thuggish. But much of it is also childish. Witness the behavior of Antonio Spadaro, "the pope's mouthpiece" who, like any good modern Jesuit, has apparently embraced the use of social media. Spadaro likes to use Twitter to promote his new book - a "conversation" with the Pope - but he also has a penchant for making snarky tweets attacking the Pope's opponents and then deleting them.

For example, a few days ago he tweeted this:

Then he deleted it and replaced it with this: 

I'm not sure why the second is any less snarky than the first, but there it is. 

A few hours later, amidst a set of tweets defending Amoris Laetitia and attacking the cardinals and their supporters, Spadaro tweeted this (I preserved the previous tweet so people could see where it fit into the stream):

Then at some point he deleted that as well.

Here is what that part of the stream looks like now:

Whatever you think of Ian McKellen, Christoph Schonborn is not an improvement.

The original is of course a scene from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, where Gandalf is speaking to the traitor Wormtongue - the "witless worm."

Yes, one of the Pope's closest allies wants you to think that those who supported the "Dubia" are akin to the traitorous spies of Saruman.

And Pope Francis is Gandalf.

(Excuse me? Did I hear you just choke?)

What will he try to use next to righteously hound the enemies of Francis, Game of Thrones? Harry Potter? The Cat in the Hat?

But in truth, the allusion isn't a bad one if one changes the roles. It is the Pope and his supporters who use "crooked words," refusing to state plainly what they really mean. The success of their project depends on crooked words.

Maybe Spadaro took down his tweet because the irony was too rich even for him.

Or maybe he just can't help tweeting and deleting, tweeting and deleting, tweeting and deleting.

What did someone once say about the banality of evil?